


One Thing

by ariskamalt



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Implied Merthur, Minor Character Death, Werewolf!Arthur, and kind of messed up, there is no major character death!, this is dark, werewolf!merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariskamalt/pseuds/ariskamalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was only one thing that transcended killing the one you loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Glen Duncan's 'The Last Werewolf,' which is one of my all-time favorite takes on werewolves. Since it's Halloween and I have a horrible love for dark, twisted stories, werewolves, and Merlin, I figured I would just combine them. The summary and ending are quotes from TLW. This is unbeta'd.

It was obscene how damp the world was around him. Even the full moon’s moist kisses, luring his blood to cram under his skull in anticipation, left him with the vague impression that the Earth itself was spreading wide legs and reaching with fingers to reveal dripping flesh at her center. He licked his lips, unable to resist, turning inside out with virgin delight.  


The blood pounding against his eyes went back down, spreading through a new body unfurling with manic pain that killed the screams before his throat could form them. Screaming took too much energy away from the shift. He writhed on the damp ground--bones muscles tendons flesh slithering and rearranging inside--before ending up on his hands and knees.  


A final thick canine hurried through his gums. An ankle slid into its proper place with a pop of air. Body steaming, molecules still wriggling with heat from dragging him from one form to the next, he stood to full height on two legs.  


Merlin turned back towards camp, took two heavy steps forward on hybrid paw-feet, and then drew away. He circled on the invisible twenty-paces-away line. The fire was still burning high enough to cast light on each of the sleeping men’s faces: Arthur’s inner circle of knights and Arthur himself. Merlin crouched, trembling, then stepped over the line.  


He came closer, paused, then came closer still. Steam from his open, panting mouth wreathed around new jaws that were dripping drool.  


Leon stirred, mumbled a quick, “Yes, sire…” then turned his head and kept snoring. Merlin reached around the tree Leon slept up against and sank his claws into his throat.  


Leon woke, went to shout and push himself up, but magic held him quiet and still. Merlin punctured the yielding flesh, claws slicing through rubbery strings of veins as he wrapped his fist around the tubing he found inside.  


Keeping his grip, the shock-wide expression on Leon’s face and the helpless pulses of blood around his hand making him shiver and drool more, Merlin stepped from around the tree. Leon’s mouth formed its last words, his eyes confused, hurt, and betrayed. Merlin crushed. Leon slumped dead.  


Percival and Elyan went the same way. Gwaine was next.  


Merlin stepped over to him, danced back, returned. He dipped his muzzle close to the sleeping man’s face and brushed the long hair back from his face with a bloody, gore-covered hybrid hand. It left a warm red streak.  


Gwaine opened his eyes slowly, then recoiled with a wild howl and reached for his sword. Arthur snapped awake. Merlin looked between them and stepped backwards over the three other bodies. 

Their faces went very white as they saw them.  


He caught their attention, made sure their eyes were watching, then licked his hand, drawing the new, long, thick tongue under the curve of a bloody claw. Arthur shoved his fist against his mouth as his sword remained steady and proud, aligned perfectly with Merlin’s heart.  


“Why have you done this?” Gwaine snarled. “What are you? Where’s Merlin?”  


Arthur cast his gaze about wildly. His lips drew back from his teeth and his sword wavered.  


“Where is he?” He asked, voice low and dangerous.  


Merlin stepped back twenty paces, watching them. Even as he bent, grabbed the ripped neckerchief between his teeth, came back, his gaze remained fixed. He dropped the piece of fabric in front of them. Waited.  


Gwaine’s sword drooped. “You,” he said.  


Merlin circled around them; they moved with him. Gwaine was having trouble keeping his sword up.  


Arthur shook his head. “Gwaine, run. I’ll hold it off. Maybe Merlin managed to escape. Tell him-“  


“No, Arthur, that thing is M-“  


Neither of them finished.  


With a lunge, Merlin grabbed Gwaine and knocked the sword from his hands. He bit through his throat in one, two gushing bites, claws digging into his shoulders to hold him upright. Arthur jabbed with his sword but Merlin ducked away and dropped Gwaine’s body from his embrace. With comical resistance, Gwaine’s half-attached head bent forwards and dragged the body down with it. Arthur screamed and surged at Merlin, who simply leaped out of reach.  


Arthur stopped, heaving for breath, in the center of camp. He looked around at the dead knights and trembled. Merlin retreated to the twenty-pace line and crouched, watching.  


“You will pay for this,” Arthur finally shuddered out.  


Merlin came back to him. The firelight reflected off the blood everywhere and the tears in Arthur’s eyes. When his sword ran Merlin through, a dull _thunk_ and grind of inner flesh, they were standing chest to chest, Arthur having to look up just slightly to see into his eyes.  


Merlin didn’t react to the sword. His mouth was open, breath escaping hot across his tongue. Arthur recoiled, staring at his sword buried through Merlin.  


“I can’t kill you,” he said factually.  


Merlin grabbed with a dark, blood-slick hybrid hand and pulled the sword out, dropping it to the ground.  


“Why did you do this?” Arthur asked.  


Merlin took a heavy step towards him, hung there, and then took another. When a clawed hand came to rest against Arthur’s cheek, sticking to it with the blood and winking bits of flesh from his men, he shivered but did not move. Merlin nuzzled the other cheek with the side of his muzzle, streaking him with Gwaine’s warmth.  


Merlin pulled away. Arthur, painted with red across both sides of his face like a blush, stared at him. He breathed in sharply.  


“Merlin.”  


The Earth opened her legs wider. They looked at each other. Then Merlin wrapped his furry arms around Arthur and dragged his nose up the side of his throat, leaving a stripe of color.  


“You wouldn’t do this,” Arthur said.  


Merlin squeezed and dragged his claws through the familiar straps of Arthur’s shoulder guard. He pulled it off.  


“My Merlin wouldn’t do this.”  


He grabbed the collar of Arthur’s chain mail and yanked, shifting his hold fluidly so that even as he forced Arthur’s arms to raise so that he could drag the mail up and off, he never lost grip on Arthur.  


“No. Merlin is dead. You killed him!”  


With nothing but the barrier of the gambeson to stop him, Merlin held him close and bit deeply into Arthur’s shoulder. He stilled. Yelled with pain. Merlin pulled him down and crouched; Arthur was bent over in his arms and across his knee trying to get away, hands pressed against his furry chest.  


Merlin drew back, mouth dripping. Arthur’s lips were parted and gleaming with moisture as went abruptly silent. Drawing one arm from around Arthur, Merlin touched his face again, cradling his cheek in the soft padding of his palm. He swept the sweat-drenched fringe of hair from Arthur’s forehead.  


“No,” Arthur said softly, and closed his eyes.  


Merlin heard the wet _pat pat pat_ of his drool and the blood hitting Arthur’s chin and exposed throat under him. Getting his nose under the collar of the rumpled gambeson, holed from his teeth, he dragged his tongue across the bite. Arthur groaned low in his throat, hanging limply in Merlin’s arms, eyes wide and reflecting the bleached light of the moon.  


Growling, Merlin pressed a claw to Arthur’s cheek and opened it, making Arthur gasp and jerk and begin to struggle again. Their eyes met.  


“Merlin,” Arthur said, pleading.  


He reached up, ran his thumb underneath Merlin’s right eye. His hand pulled back, returned, touched a pointed ear, drew away again, came back as he stuck a finger inside Merlin’s mouth and felt the blunt-sharp edge of a bottom canine. Merlin panted, shivering, eyes closed.  


“Are you going to kill me?” Arthur asked.  


Merlin shuddered and his arms squeezed around Arthur; he whimpered and pressed his nose to Arthur’s ear, claws digging through the gambeson. Another low whine then he had dropped Arthur roughly on the ground next to the fire. He ran, stood in his pile of shredded clothing, and turned to face the camp. Arthur was on one knee, staring at him. Merlin took a step back in his direction; Arthur held still, eyes burning.  


Merlin drew away again. Once he had moved past the remains of his clothes, Arthur was no longer looking at him but instead at the men whose carcasses were splayed around the camp. Merlin turned and ran deep into the forest. 

###### 

Arthur rode out alone, back to the place where Merlin had disappeared and almost all of his most trusted knights and friends had died.  


He stripped to the waist, untied his sword, and left his horse at a tree far away. Merlin came silently to him after night had descended and the fire was lit. Somewhere he’d gotten new clothes but he stripped them and sat across from Arthur, shivering even as the shadows of his too-sharp bones were accented by the fire.  


“Come back to Camelot,” Arthur said after a while.  


“No.”  


“Gaius and Gwen think you’re dead.”  


“I am dead.”  


They stared at each other. Arthur imagined he could still smell blood in the air.  


“It wasn’t you doing that. You didn’t kill them.”  


“Wait,” Merlin whispered. “Just. You wait.”  


“You’re not a monster, Merlin. I would know. I do know. You think I would have come back here if I thought you were? If I didn’t understand? Look, it hurts, okay? I miss them a lot. But we need you.”  


Merlin’s lips parted silently as he stared across the fire at Arthur. His brows came together.  


“How can you be like this?” He asked.  


“Like what?”  


Merlin felt the moon starting to drag, the world beginning to bloom, his blood curdling. Arthur watched the realization slide across his face.  


“Who did you kill?”  


“A family,” Arthur wrapped his arms around himself. “Down in the lower town. Last moon. I went for a walk because I felt like something was wrong and when it started I went into their house. They were sleeping. Wife, husband and their kid. It wasn’t quick. Or painless.”  


He sighed out the last part. Merlin licked his lips and gestured vaguely at Arthur’s breeches. “You might as well take those off.”  


“I know,” Arthur said.  


Merlin went to the ground doing his usual lunar wiggles like a wounded animal with an arrow driven deep, legs flailing, eyes wide, nostrils rattling breaths. Arthur simply bent double and listened to the _wulf_ bubbles popping inside as it expanded his joints and stroked cartilage into new shapes. When it was done they looked at each other. Then they looked back in the direction Arthur had come from.  


Merlin walked over, nosed the scar he had given that the fur hadn’t grown over, and then shoved his tongue under Arthur’s black lip and caressed the canines slotted together underneath it. He growled hungrily.  


Arthur touched Merlin’s hip where the mystery creature—not so mysterious now—had bowled him over four months ago as he had gotten up to pee one night while they were out questing. The matted scar tissue was bumpy under Arthur’s clawed hand. They turned as one back in the direction of Camelot.  


It was Arthur’s second change, Merlin’s third. Their first together. Virginal delight demanded a christening. At least, that’s what the moon told them. After the fourth and fifth, sixth, seventh, it simply became delight. Arthur hadn’t been able to understand it at first: why Merlin had bitten him instead of leaving him a corpse like the rest. But he understood now.  


Because there was only one thing that transcended killing the one you loved.  


Killing _with_ the one you loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
